The Imaging and Medical Therapy (IMT) beamline a.k.a the Imaging and Medical Beam Line (IMBL) was built to be a highly versatile facility for x-ray imaging and radiobiology, for both materials and biomedical research. It provides a large beam with either a monochromatic, or a broad spectrum.
The size of the x-ray emitting source in the storage ring provides beams with high coherence. The nature of x-ray production using synchrotron electrons and a superconducting Wiggler magnet provide high intensities relative to laboratory based sources.
The beam coherence is an extremely useful beam property for imaging, allowing x-ray phase contrast to be exploited. At the moment this combination of intensity and coherence in a beam can only be achieved at synchrotron sources.

Aside from two experiment hutches, IMBL hosts additional infrastructure, including clinical preparation rooms and laboratories. These were built to support experiments involving unpreserved tissues, and living organisms The large hutch in basement of the Satellite Building will allow imaging research to be carried out on human volunteers.
IMBL is the most recent synchrotron beamline to be built for this purpose, and is one of only a few in the world designed for human studies.

Research…in a nutshell

The IMBL beamline is used for both X-ray imaging (radiography) and X-ray radiotherapy/radiobiology research.

X-ray radiography is useful for many areas of scientific and technological work. From geology and paleontology, to additive manufacturing, pre-clinical and clinical imaging. To name a few.

X-ray Radiotherapy is used as a treatment for cancer. New methods of radiotherapy are being researched using the very bright IMBL x-ray beams.

Radiography is a well used imaging methodology in the clinic. We are aiming to use IMBL’s unique capabilities to make x-ray images of living humans.

The beamline is currently the longest on the Australian Synchrotron long. The distance from the X-ray source to the center of the Satellite Building hutch is 135 meters.

Since the beams emitted by the synchrotron diverge slightly, this gives IMBL hutch 3B a potential beam width of around 45 cm (depending on the beam energy).